A 76-year-old woman with physical disabilities forced to ask strangers on the street to help her open the door to her Travancore building has won a significant legal case in which two owners corporations were ordered to pay her $10,000 and install automated doors and ramps in the building.

In a decision hailed as a victory for Victorians with disabilities, the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that the owners corporations maintaining the complex had discriminated against Anne Black, a legally blind pensioner reliant on a wheelchair or scooter, by failing to make reasonable adjustments to the building’s common areas to accommodate her disability.